Ungodly Hours
by ten.years.only.with.you
Summary: The only thing worse that a girl who hates you is a girl who loves you. Cappie's POV.


I do not own Greek or Scott Michael Foster, but a girl can dream.

You can only love like this once. It's enough to destroy you when it's over. But it's enough to fix you when she comes backs. And somehow, someway, she always comes back.

This is the lover that sends you into a shameless spiral of self-doubt and Sandusky lager. This is the lover that cannot be stopped by a freight train or sixty seven school buses or countless nameless, faceless girls in your bed the next morning. This is the lover that suspends time and space and all laws of physics, the heart, and law enforcement. You wish you could loathe her. God, you wish you could.

You do everything you can to forget evergreen eyes and golden hair and silk skin. You fuck everything that walks, hoping, praying that just maybe once you will moan someone else's name. Somebody else's name other than hers. You're getting good at suffering in silence, pretending that everything means nothing to you.

Nothing meaning everything. Everything meaning her.

And just when you have reached some kind of medium where you only get drunk every other night and clean when no one else knows, she comes.

Pushing into you, peeling away the layers on the remains of your brittle heart, she comes again, relocating pulse points and sweet spots that only she could recall. You groan under her touch, feather light fingers dancing across your naked shoulders, leaving little etchings that she is unaware of. Before the sun hits the horizon line, melting a spaghetti sunrise of rich reds and pinks, she'll be gone, and it will be as if she was never there at all.

But she always leaves evidence of her time, of her ungodly hour: little pricks and scars decorate your back, shoulders, and neck, invisible to the naked eye. Invisible to everyone, except you. They remind you that the past is never going away, that the pain will never cease. That she is never going away.

When you meet Rebecca you admire her moxie. Yes, she's a bitch, but you kind of like how she isn't intimidated by you. It's refreshing and different. Only one other girl had enough guts to stand up to you. You find it too damn ironic that Rebecca hates her, and for some reason that makes you like Rebecca even more. It's just too fucking simple to be petty these days.

You didn't count on liking Rebecca as more than a good fuck, but for a motive unbeknownst to you and the rest of the world, you like the fact that she's a hot mess of bundled nerves that needs to be saved. You have always enjoyed being the knight in shining armor, the hero, but with Rebecca, it might actually mean something. Her bag is heavy, and you want to carry her, but this is ungodly and wrong by all the universal laws.

Rebecca is a brokenhearted wreck, and as much as her vivacity makes you crazy and turns you into a stereotypically horny twenty one year old male, she has always been in this. And she always will be. Which is why you get so pissed off.

For the first time in God knows how long, you made a conscious attempt to forget evergreen eyes and golden hair and silk skin, but damned if she doesn't pull you right back in. Timing has never been her strong point or yours, but still, you allow her to lead you down the beach. Feeling the warm sand beneath your toes, listening as she waxes nostalgic about freshmen year and having no ten year plan. You can't help but smile at this.

When her lips hit yours in the most chaste and perfect kiss you can ever remember, you forget all about the gorgeous raven haired girl you already call your own.

Feet dancing backwards down your timeline and you feel the world move a little, sending you soaring through the days, months, years, and when you hear her sigh into your mouth…that's when it sucks to be a man for once in your life. For the first time in this, your waltz, you turn your back on her and walk away. Only looking back when you know that she won't catch you.

She told you that kissing a boy was number eleven on her list. She knows that you know that she was lying. You don't really give a damn. But you try to make yourself believe that you are doing the tabooed right thing when you leave her and go to the girl who doesn't have your heart in her hands.

You realize that the universe has a fucked up sense of humor when Rebecca breaks up with you because of her. Honestly though, you had to keep silent in sex for fear that the name you called would be incorrect. You replaced raven eyes and hair with evergreen and golden locks. Hell, you tried something new, but like you said, she was always in this. She always would be.

As it turns out, fate isn't very funny either. Via your shared sibling, you find out that she has degraded herself down to amateur hour dating. It's fucking ridiculous. The guy has the most ludicrous sideburns and wears hiking clothes in Ohio. Plus he gets her the wrong coffee. You could recite her coffee order in your sleep, with a lobotomy. It's just one of the things that you can never, will never, won't ever forget.

When she asks you to attempt a friendship with Max-ipad, you guffaw at her efforts to keep you in her life, yet at arm's reach where you can't hurt her. So instead she hurts you, thus your waltz continues. The music is getting louder now when Max confronts you in the KT basement. You feel cornered, and stupid for thinking that he may not know why you hate him. Okay, so maybe you don't hate him, you just want to push him in front of a car.

You don't hate him until you see a lavaliere around her neck. Then you're just plain livid.

He's out of the country doing some science-y thing. You and she are pretending to study for midterms, bouncing from the library to Dobler's back to the KT house in the wee hours of the night. You're finally making progress in the midterm material when your shared younger sibling shows up, ranting about a girl and how waiting sucks and crappy metaphors about potato chips. When he leaves, she asks you if you're waiting around. If you're wasting time. That's when you lose it.

And suddenly you're both screaming at each other in the foyer at four in the morning on a Thursday.

Before you know it, you have agreed to move on because being friends is a lie and pretending that you aren't more than friends is a lie. And two days later, you find out that your houses have been paired together for the Homecoming tailgate. Since the tailgate involves paper flowers and glitter, you can count yourself out, which makes avoiding her easy when you lock yourself in your room with comic books and sub sandwiches.

Then she calls. You find her on the side of the road, Garden of Eden float chained to the back of a truck, cell phone in her right hand. After arguing about which part of the truck is broken (as well as lecturing her about not calling the Auto-Club), you stand in silence waiting for the tow truck, backs to each other. When she apologizes, you bark out a short laugh, lighting into her about how she won't leave you the fuck alone.

You're standing there, yelling, again, at each other, again. Only this time, you're interrupted by the tow truck guy. The rest of the day is a drunken blur of beer and another nameless, faceless girl that doesn't have evergreen eyes or golden hair. You so badly want to find her, tell her that you're sorry for yelling and that you don't care if you need to move on because the truth is that you can't. You don't know how, and even if you did, you wouldn't want to.

Five days later, you're in Dobler's at noon.

Yes, you have reached a new level of low, but thankfully you are not passed out on a strip club couch with her standing over you, credit card in hand, obligated to bail you out of yet another mess. No, this time you are preparing for your IFC meeting by drinking copiously, since you're pretty sure that the float prank did not go unnoticed. You're downing shots left and right, pretending that the whiskey doesn't taste. That's when you see her hug him. Maxipad is back from England. You pound the shots faster when you see them kiss; it's like cold water being doused all over your body. You have to forget evergreen eyes and golden hair and silk skin.

The meeting at IFC goes better than it could have. Your brethren have taken away your social calendar starting Sunday. It's Thursday. There is still time to plan a massive blowout party for tomorrow. Reconvening with the rest of the KTs at the house, a theme is procured, by Spitter. The end of the world. You laugh along with the rest of the lot, dishing out assignments, and trying not to look at your little brother and his new girlfriend. It seems that his waiting was not in vain, and you try not to replace yourself and her in the situation. She is not coming back.

You think you are finally starting to get it.

Until the next day, while passing out fliers, she literally falls into your arms at Dobler's. You know that she is sitting at a table with him. You even gave them a flier, proving that feeling of "I'm so done with her, so watch this". But when she trips and catapults into you, your body heat rises, and you can feel her heart almost jump out of its chest, you want nothing more than to stay like that for a very long time, if not forever.

So you let go, before you don't have the chance to.

It's the night of the party. The theme came together quite nicely, and the place is packed to the rafters with frats and sororities from all over Greek row. Noticeably missing, however, are your little brother and his big sister. That is until you're exiting the token closet under the stairs when a body slams into your, forcing you back into the darkness of the tiny room. Yanking the light chain, brightness fills the area, and you're faced with the person who shoved you back in the closet.

It would be unfair to say that you're not shocked. She is staring back at you, evergreen eyes fixed on your cerulean blue, golden hair flawlessly lying across her shoulders, silk skin, suddenly brushing against yours. Oh sweet Jesus, you think you could die a happy man when you feel her lips touch yours in a kiss hurried, feverish, and desperate. Maybe, just maybe, then you remember Maxipad.

You inquire as to what the hell she is thinking, gently pushing her hands down from your shoulders. She tells you what you've wanted to hear for so long.

"If it's the end of the world, I wanna be with you."

Your lips are bruised from her kiss. And your mouth doesn't seem to work. When you vomit out the words, you kind of can't believe them to be true, which is why you understand when she throws open the door to the closet upon your rejection, slamming right into her supposed boyfriend. You almost feel bad for the guy because you're starting to think that you and she were made for this. For not getting it right, until the last second. But even then, even when it's the end of the world, you can't be with the one person you can't be without.

You condemn yourself to the roof. No one dares to go up there to disturb you. The noise of the party below is deafening, the music coursing through your ears, screams and laughter reaching you on the shingles. You sip your beer, wishing that you weren't sober, that you could fuck another girl, and pretend that she can't affect you.

That's when you're disturbed. No, not by her. By her best friend. Ash sits on the roof next to you, accepting the silence. You wonder how the hell she even knew to find you up here, but you also know the entire party below can see you camped out on the roof. She is the only one stupid enough, or dare you think, brave enough to venture up.

Ash launches into a conversation about her. Of all the things you didn't want to talk about. But that is the only reason that the current ZBZ prez would be sitting next to you on the roof of the KT house, risking bird poop stains on her new leather pants. She's rambling about how she is going to break up with the next guy after Maxipad, and the guy after that, and the guy after that because not one of those guys will ever be you.

"Because for some odd reason, you're the one that she's supposed to be with."

Below you, the countdown to the end of the world is beginning. You're still sitting on the roof, without her. You know that if the world is going up in flames or drowning in water or under the siege of aliens, you'd only want to be in one place. With one person.

You scurry off the roof, leap over your bed, and shimmy down the staircase where you run into Lame-bers. He notices your hurried state, and after giving you the once over asks where you are going even though he knows, full well, that you are in route to pull a John Cusack, radio held over your head, outside her window. You scoff at his accusation of the relationship between you and her. As much as you hate to admit it, he has a good point: won't she just leave in the end, destroying you all over again?

You really are going to move on this time around.

So instead of hauling ass over to the ZBZ house, you have another beer. It only seems logical to drink away the problem. It's the first step to moving on, or at least that's what you think it says in that 12 step program that you've never tried.

When you wake the next morning, the whole house is quiet with bodies lain out over all surfaces like corpses. The place is a wreck, ensuring the bonafide awesomeness of the night before. Though the Omega Chi party tonight may be a hell of a lot of fun, it certainly won't add up to that of the KTs.

You send the pledges to pick up your ninja costume, all the while observing your little bro and his girlfriend. He'll barely glance in your direction, let alone talk to you without biting off his words. When the hour of the party rolls around , you find out from Dale that Spitter has done poorly on his chemistry and is spending the night with all things science-y.

In true fashion, you don your ninja outfit and scale the walls of the chem building. The windows pop right open and you can't help but wonder why the fuck they stay open all night long. Anyway, you creep your way over to the door, doing somersaults for the hell of it. Muffled noise is coming from outside. You begin to think that you're fucked by Huck and the CRU police force when you hear murmuring and the jingle of keys, as well as a few choice four letter words.

Your little brother and his big sister are talking outside the door. About you.

And Maxipad.

And now you kind of realize why Spitter was so pissed. So you throw open the door to the room, slamming into her, and knocking your little brother in the nose. You make some joke about the windows being open, and pretend that you didn't hear their entire conversation beforehand.

Your shared sibling gets to work, while you pretend to give advice about bongs and bubblers. She is fetching needed items in silence, not looking in your direction. You're almost grateful because you don't know what you'd do if green met blue, right there over the not bong science project. You finally offer to help because you've been standing guard for an hour and nothing has happened.

The moment you decide to "help" the project crashes to the floor, and Spitter puts you back on guard duty. After two more hours of deafening silence, you ask to help again. She shakes her head and he looks at you like you're terminal. Throwing your hands into the air, you apologize. Then Spitter lights into you.

He accuses you of being a douche mover and an asshole and completely guilty. You're about to throw it all back in his face when you see her in your peripheral vision. Despite everything about you moving on and forgetting her, for some reason you'll never be able to watch her fall in conceit. She hates being the weak one, and for once in your waltz, she is, so you take the blame. As always.

Beginning your tirade about how you wronged Maxipad is cut short when she interjects.

"I pulled him into the closet. I wanted to get back together with him."

Spitter's eyes grow at least fifteen inches in diameter like a small dinner plate before he screeches a "WHAT?" at the top of his lungs at his sister.

She rests her eyes on yours and he turns towards you. "Cappie and I aren't getting back together. Are we?"

Just like that, the world stops. You have no answer. You open your mouth to stall, and then for a lucky you, the building alarm goes off. The three of you rush out into the corridors, lit like they're from the Matrix, before stumbling into the cries of CRU law enforcement. Once again, for the two people you love the most, you take the fall. She glances at you before Huck handcuffs you, and green meets blue, and you wonder if maybe time isn't everything.

The next day you're in the quad wearing a vest and poking trash. Oh community service. She shows up in front of you, apologizing for not telling her little brother that this was all on her, and that no, you are not a douche mover. There is no ending line or corny hug, just an invitation for a see you later. She turns away, and you wonder how hard it is for her to admit defeat. Before you can think about it, she pops a dart gun in the middle of your forehead.

You both laugh, and for once, without thinking, you let green meet blue. And that's when you see it in her eyes. You haven't seen her look at you like that since you were nineteen. That's the last time she told you that she loved you.

So she wasn't lying when she ganked you into the closet under the staircase.

Now you're aware of your idiocy, but the window of opportunity closed. You missed it, once again. And you're this close to asking her to put your trash picker through your chest cause it'd be easier than pretending that she didn't still have some sway when she looks at you like that.

The semester moves forward into autumn. You barely see her around until you make a point to seek her out, but that would kind of defeat the purpose of letting go. Sure, you see her at the coffee cart, in your woman studies class, where you have chosen a different seat, at Dobler's. But you both seem to be busy. Maybe it's a good thing.

Your friendship with your former enemy is growing quickly, over the two things that you both have in common: the Amphora Society and her. Hell you've even both started working together. In public. Well not too public…cater waiting. One town over.

Too bad your friendship with your little brother seems to always have an absent third and completely unmentioned party involved.

The day that Spitter has decided to lavaliere his girlfriend, you don't accompany him to the Titan bookstore. You've only been in there one other time, and it was for something that shall not be named.

A day later, you find out that the bookstore only had one remaining KT lavaliere, which one of your brothers has swallowed, ergo there is little hope that it will return in one piece. You little brother is pissed off. You want to help him, but you don't want to give it up. Although if you let go, it may get easier than it already is. Especially if the girl at work finds your arrogance charming and accepts your invitation for dinner.

You reach into your dresser and pull out Pandora's box, handing it over, noting the irony of it belonging to one Cartwright. Spitter looks at the box, looks at you and asks the question you knew was coming but didn't want to hear. You don't reply when he asks why YOU of all people have a lavaliere. When he realizes why you have it, he shuts his mouth. Quickly. And tries to retract the question. Too late. It's time to go to work, and hope that Lana will say yes.

Lana agrees to date you. She's gorgeous with raven hair and eyes. And she gets you. She doesn't like to go to work. She tried college but it didn't make sense since all she did was skip her classes. She likes pranks and chugging beer and TV shows like _Predators of the Deep_. She IS Lady Cappie at its finest.

If you're honest with yourself, it makes you uncomfortable.

What makes you even more uncomfortable is your little brother spinning fairy tale romances about the two of you. Calling her a keeper and telling you're crazy if you let her get away. But maybe this isn't the fairy tale you had in mind. In a sudden flash you recall your fight with her that ended your "friendship".

The words scream at you, forcing you out of the KT house and into the strip club where you can be around women no more complex than strippers. Your afternoon consists of bottomless pints of Sandusky Lager, women in scantily clad outfits, and ignoring the voices in your head, as well as phone calls from your little brother.

Eyes slammed shut, head bent over the catwalk, you can hear it.

"No other girl in the world compares to you."

And it's true. No matter how much you want to like Lana, you can't. Because of evergreen eyes and golden hair and silk skin, so with these words dancing around your brain, you end things. You want something different. You know that you want her, but you aren't sure if you're ready to admit it. Not just yet.

A week later and it's Thanksgiving break. You originally make plans with your new best friend Lame-bers but call them off due to KT tradition and being able to accept endings. You think you are beginning to accept endings, until your little brother announces over pool and whiskey that he and big sis will be staying for break. This fact puts you in a better mood and you hope the guys don't notice, but you know that they did.

The turkey hunt begins around the house, and you start to think that it's a good thing you blew off Lame-bers cause, though they are your closest friends, they are pretty damn dumb. Eventually, since all the KT roads lead to debauchery, the hunt snakes its way to the Omega Chi house. Your comrades are ready to prank, but due to this not so new friendship, you argue against it, which your brothers automatically pick up on.

And then they do what they had not done since freshmen year. They lecture you. About her. Why would you want to go through all the pain and suffering again? To be with the love of your life? It sounds so simple and unnervingly easy when it spills from their lips.

Thanksgiving depends entirely on what you're thankful for. She is at the top of that list without failure. So what's the problem? They make it sound so childish and you wonder if it had been this easy to figure out all along.

The KT feast consists of usually, beer, toast, jelly beans, pretzels, and a pie if there is enough money. Which of course there rarely is, not that you touch the stuff anymore anyhow. While the meal is being prepared you sneak out onto the roof to find your little bro in deep contemplation over something science-y. He's in the mood to talk so you let him spew about this special project about a wire that always grows back, finding its other half and reconnecting despite all odds.

You think that you have heard this story before.

Spitter knows you too well, asking if anything is bothering you. Normally you try to avoid this topic with him, but before you can button your lips, it comes flowing forth all about her. "Pretend like she's just some other girl." He says, with a wave of his hand.

If only it were that simple. "She's not just some other girl. At least not to me. I had a chance to be with her and my 'friend' convinced me not to take it."

Spitter counters with , "Maybe this friend doesn't have your best interests in mind." And you shrug. It's all over now anyways, no going back. But you can't go back if you'd never really gone forward at all either.

Or so you think.

Descending the stairs, Spitter behind you, a three person shield has assembled in front of the door to keep out intruders in the form of Lame-bers, Rebecca, and her. With one crook of her brow, you sigh in defeat, allowing Lame-bers to enter the house, only because the box he is holding appeals to your fellow brothers.

Dinner is a quiet affair, idle chit chat between old friends, and stolen glances between you and her. Your decision is made. You move for her love, kneeling before it in awe, amazed that you ever let yourself feel anything otherwise. Sure, your heart was made to be broken, but only by her. Ever by her. Never again by her. Cause now, green met blue and you were confident that star-crossed meant something entirely different.

Spitter and her, argue over the wishbone, which she snaps in her favor, reveling in the glory of your eyes. And without protest, you find the two of you strolling down a dead Greek row to the ZBZ house, comfortable silence and November winds, coursing through.

Inside, it's warm, but you both stand still, you on a lower step, her one higher than you. She always higher. It's a moment where you can feel the world shift, the balance hanging by a shrill thread, waiting, hoping, groping for home.

Petty words aside, you gaze upward into her siren's face, too ungodly lovely to be human and still love you. But you're here now. "Cap, I poured my heart out to you at the End of the World party. You didn't come after me. You should have come after me."

Just because she was reckless with your heart, many moons ago, is no reason to be reckless with hers. "I know and I have no excuse. But I'm here now, and I'm telling you--"

She is gasping for air, eyes full, "Telling me what?"

No words can describe this to her right now. So instead you act, covering her mouth with hers, letting that wire grow back into its rightful place. Oh God, how you thought you could live without is impossible, ungodly. You're ashamed for thinking that maybe there could have been some other girl to replace this, to replace her.

You don't know how to not feel this way. Foolish boy, you are for believing that something else could might, maybe, never feel like this. Like a half and half, binding a whole together, finding its way home. Maybe it does all come down to timing, a register in the ungodly hour that you never held sacred until now, until this.

Ask if you never loved her. Ask if it was ever over. You can't lie to save your life.

The future for you has always been a thing of the past, reflected in her alone. She was your first love, only love, and will be your last.


End file.
